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Of Pandas and People gives evidence for intelligent design from origin-of-life studies, biochemistry, genetics, homology, and paleontology. In a unique manner, Of Pandas and People gives the pros and cons of both the biological-evolution theory and the intelligent-design concept. Pandas promotes a widely recognized goal of science education by fostering a questioning, skeptical and scrutinizing mindset. This supplemental biology textbook provides an extensive index, glossary, references, and suggested reading and resources to help familarize the reader with the material. Pandas is enhanched by the use of numerous diagrams, charts, illustrations and full-color pictures.

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Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Biological origins can be one of the most captivating subjects in the curriculum. As a biology teacher, you have probably already seen how the topic excites your students. The allure of dinosaurs, trilobites, fossilized plants, and ancient human remains is virtually irresistible to many students. Indeed, many prominent scientists owe their interest in science to an early exposure to this topic.

The subject of origins, however, is not only captivating. It is also controversial. Because it touches on questions of enduring significance, this topic has long been a focal point for vigorous debate--legal and political, as well as intellectual. Teachers often find themselves walking a tight-rope, trying to teach good science, while avoiding the censure of parents or administrators.

To complicate things, the cultural conflict has been compounded by controversies within the scientific community itself. Since the 1970s, for example, scientific criticisms of the long-dominant neo-Darwinian theory of evolution (which combines classical Darwinism with Mendelian genetics) have surfaced with increasing regularity. In fact, the situation is such that paleontologist Niles Eldredge was driven to remark: "If it is true that an influx of doubt and uncertainty actually marks periods of healthy growth in science, then evolutionary biology is flourishing today as it seldom has in the past. For biologists are collectively less agreed upon the details of evolutionary mechanics than they were a scant decade ago. Moreover, many scientists have advocated fundamental revisions of orthodox evolutionary theory."

Similarly, the standard models explaining chemical evolution--the origin of the first living cell--have taken severe scientific criticism. These criticisms have sparked calls for a radically different approach to explaining the origin of life on earth.

Though many defenders of the orthodox theories remain, some observers now describe these theories as having entered paradigm breakdown--a state where a once-dominant theory encounters conceptual problems or can no longer explain many important data. Science historians Earthy and Collingridge, for example, have described new-Darwinism as a paradigm that's lost its capacity to solve important scientific problems. They note that both defenders and critics find it hard to agree even about what data are relevant to deciding scientific disagreements. Putting it more bluntly, in 1980 Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould pronounced the "neo-Darwinism synthesis" to be "effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy."

In this intellectual and cultural climate, knowing how to teach biological origins can be exceedingly difficult. When respected scientists disagree about which theories are correct, teachers may be forgiven for not knowing which ones to teach.

Controversy is not all bad, however, for it gives teachers the opportunity to engage their students at a deeper level. Instead of filling young minds with discrete facts and vocabulary lists, teachers can show their students the rough-and-tumble of genuine scientific debate. In this way, students begin to understand how science really works. When they see scientists of equal stature disagreeing over the interpretation of the same data, students learn something about the human dimension of science. They also learn about the distinction between fact and inference--and how background assumptions influence scientific judgment.

The purpose of this text is to expose your students to the captivating and the controversial in the origins debate--to take them beyond the pat scenarios offered in most basal texts and encourage them to grapple with ideas in a scientific manner.

Pandas does this in two ways. First, it offers a clear, cogent discussion of the latest data relevant to biological origins. In the process, it rectifies many serious errors found in several basal biology texts.

Second, Pandas offers a different interpretation of current biological evidence. As opposed to most textbooks, which present the more-or-less orthodox neo-Darwinian accounts of how life originated and diversified, Pandas also presents a clear alternative, which the authors call "intelligent design." Throughout, the text evaluates how well different views can accommodate anomalous data within their respective interpretive frameworks. As students learn to weigh and sort competing views and become active participants in the clash of ideas, you may be surprised at the level of motivation and achievement displayed by your students.

About the Author

Percival Davis--Co-Author. Professor of Life Science, Hillsborough Community college, Tampa, Florida, since 1968; author of several college level biology texts, including Biology with Caude Villee and Eldra Solomon (W.B. Saunders, 1985); B.A. in zoology from DePauw University; M.A. in zoology from Columbia University; 60 credit hours beyond the Master's degree at Columbia University and the University of south Florida in zoology, ecology and physiology.

Dean H. Kenyon--Co-Author. Professor of Biology, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California; contributing author to festschrifts of A.I. Oparin and Sidney Fox; coauthor of Biochemical Predestination (McGraw-Hill, 1969), which was the best-selling advanced level book on chemical evolution in the 1970s; S.B. in physics, 1961 from the University of Chicago; Ph.D. in biophysics, 1965 from Stanford University; National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow 1965-1966 at the University of California, Berkeley; visiting scholar in 1974 to Trinity College, Oxford University; Associate, chemical Evolution Branch, NASA-Ames Research Center in California, 1974-1976; Phi Beta Kappa.

Top customer reviews

I wanted to read this book because of the controversy it has generated. There are only 7 editors and contributors who wrote this 6 chapter, 170 page "textbook." The premise is that this "textbook" contrasts intelligent design and Darwinian evolution. In actuality, the book selectively promotes facts and theories that support intelligent design and ignores the other 99% of the existant data. This book is a horrible joke. A religious text masquerading as a scientific textbook. I have to wonder...what do the people who believe this book is credible think about cosmology, particle physics, the rest of the universe out there, and the rest of science that has been discovered in the last 2,000 years. Well, I guess if you make believe it simply doesn't (or even can't) exist, you never have to contemplate it or worry about explaining it. That does make life a lot simpler, doesn't it! I feel better now. Guess I'll stay here with my head in the sand for a while longer.

At first glance, a student might assume Of Pandas and People is a science or biology book. It pretends to be. In actuality, it is a religious book in thin disguise.

This book's single acknowledged goal is, "to present data from six areas of science that bear on the central question of biological organisms." P. Viii. In other words to present "Intelligent Design" as an alternative to Darwin's theory of Evolution. The authors never say just exactly what Intelligent Design is, however, in previous editions design meant God. In other words, that it was God who created all life on earth. And that it did not evolve by natural processes.

This book attempts to snow the reader with various rather complex biochemical arguments concerning the first formation of organic molecules billions of years in the past. The authors say how it was nearly impossible for this process to have occurred naturally, ie. that God did it.

Though not completely dismissing Evolution as an authentic process, the authors say it is wise to include the alternate theory of Intelligent Design in any scientific didcussions.

The authors wish to assume that Evolution does not have all the facts, that there are Gaps in the fossil record and that the "Cambrian Explosion" occurred at warp speed. They insist that Intelligent Design has "facts" that back up its assumption. They present none.

Where this book really misses the mark is its treatment of the subject of human Evolution. The authors acknowledge the existance of proto human fossils yet dismiss the findings of all the paleoanthropologists. P.113, They regard Homo Erectus and all other archaic humans as being little more than apes. This is a prime tenet of Creationism and places the science discussed in the book clearly in the realm of the Creationists who would like to see this kind of pseudo science placed in our nations schools.

After hearing about this book, I had to read it for myself. So when I saw a penny copy ($4.00 with shipping) on amazon, I bought it. There is so very, very much wrong with this drivel that masquerades as science that it is difficult to know where to start, and equally difficult to know where to stop. Since there are so many other informative reviews here, I will address only one issue discussed in this book: the alleged lack of "transitional" species in the fossil record (and in extant life for that matter).

These authors do not seem to understand that ALL species are transitional because evolution is a continuous ongoing process; each species is not some kind of endpoint - rather they are snapshots of this process. The authors' misunderstanding of this point is evident from their diagrams of "presumed fossil sequences", their discussions of archaeopteryx, the australopithecines, and so forth all throughout the book. (They also seem unable to understand that because fossilization can only occur under suitable conditions, the fossil record is necessarily incomplete.)

Based on their approach, I am convinced that given ANY two species imaginable, these authors would claim a missing link between them, in much the same way that given ANY two real numbers, I can always name another ("missing") number between them.

Honestly, to hear people rant about this book, you'd think it was some sort of fundamentalist tract. In reality, it is a very mild-mannered book indeed - so mild, in fact, that it is rather boring.

A few of the claims of the book are rather embarrassingly bad (see the reviews of opposing reviewers for examples), while others are short on details, but the claims of unreadablitily, incoherence, etc., are just absurd.